Waternomics aims at developing a water information platform that can be deployed in a wide range of environments. To gain understanding of the impact of a specific operational context on the system, Waternomics organises three pilots in different locations in Europe. One of the pilot locations is in the Municipallity of Thermi in Greece where households will receive real-time and personalised information about water usage and conservation measures. Thermi Municipality is located in the southeastern part of the prefecture of Thessaloniki. It stretches east of Greater Thessaloniki, it is adjacent to Halkidiki from the west and it is the northwest boundary of the province of Thessaloniki. It belongs to Regional Decentralised Administration of Macedonia – Thrace and supported by the command centers in Thessaloniki.
Thermi Munipality is a dynamic region that brings together many different and important developmental characteristics. Thermi has been developed as an area of urban expansion of Greater Thessaloniki. It has developed peri-urban agriculture activities and operates as industry installation pole. In its boundaries a number of modern highly specialized services have been installed together with some leisure and commerce services as well. The great urban expansion plan for the Municipality of Thermi aims in assisting the establishment of Thessaloniki as a “Metropolis of the Balkans”, with satellite areas – suburbs. The Municipality of Thermi was selected as one of the main receptors of residential development through a design that provides densely built areas with high-quality housing. In terms of water management installations Thermi Municipality has 25000 water meters for water supply installed and 432 for irrigation. Its water network is approximately 1200 km used for water supply and 300km for irrigation making possible the dissemination of 3.307.084 m3 per year for ware supply and approximately 13948 hours of irrigation annually. Water supply comes from 5 water basins and a number of drillings. In particular there are 57 drilling installations for water supply and 31 for irrigation. In Waternomics, Thermi Municipality is participating in the pilot aiming to demonstrate the effects of the water information platform to domestic users. Up to now almost 20 households have been listed to participate in the pilots and a number of them have already started providing water measurements on a monthly basis so that baseline information is collected. Next steps will include the installation of smart meters in main supply pipes and in some cases the installation of such smart meters in specific household usage outlets such as kitchen, dishwasher, toilet flush, etc.
